I REALLY DIDN’T LIKE THIS FILM. Why? Well, there are a few reasons.
Reason 1) The plot: Which I lost.
This film didn’t really have an immensly believable plot. Let’s think... safety freak who doesn’t do anything remarkably exciting against laissez-faire girlfriend. They get a relationship after a French nudist scuba diver nicks off with safety freak’s previous girlfriend. Doesn’t quite work, eh? Then previous girlfriend meets safety freak and wants another relationship after she is put off by nudist scuba bloke. Safety freak then has to decide which is the safest option, gets a surprising result, runs off and becomes friends with nudist scuba instructor. Connection to life, nothing, believable? no.
Reason 2) It wasn’t developed enough:
You could see it working at the start... the characters sounded good, but the plot just did not develop them. Rodolpho the blind ferret could have been great slapstick but it just wasn’t taken out to the level it should have been. A great example of a situattion where the ferret could have come in was a moment such as Mary’s flatmate’s dog being fed speed in ’There’s Something about Mary.’ That could have given it a little humour.
Reason 3) It just, wasn’t warming:
Whereas in other comedies, you warm to characters, this was tired and the characters were too abrasive. The appeal of a film like ’There’s Something About Mary’ is that you can relate to the characters, you can see that they can be a little stupid at points and maybe go a little crazy. There is just nothing warm about Reuben Feffer et al.
Reason 4) It tried to be something it couldn’t be.
’A cross between Friends and There’s Something About Mary’ squealed the excitable News of the World. That was insightful, considering it starred Ben Stiller (of There’s Something About Mary fame) and Jennifer Aniston (lately, of Friends). But you could see it going through their heads in the production office. Plinky plonky soundtrack in the background (Friends), Stiller playing a person who would be considered an outright social reject (Mary), seemed very similar. It just wasn’t thought up enough.
Alas! This is one man speaking and forsooth, I cannot change opinion, so watch it, yet I do not recommend it and decree upon it 2 stars.